


Trap

by Eva



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst, Dubious Consent, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-05-16
Updated: 2011-05-16
Packaged: 2017-10-19 11:22:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,459
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/200282
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eva/pseuds/Eva
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>From the kink meme, in which Mycroft is in love and Lestrade is pretty sure he's trapped.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Trap

*********

The ceiling fan curved slowly, bringing the barest hint of movement to the air. Lestrade stared at it, watching the blades swoop ‘round, seeming to slow and then gain speed, though he knew that was an illusion.

Another thing he could do without.

The sun shone weakly on the bare countertop, the cheap kitchen table. The bits of the kettle where the paint had chipped away gleamed. His hand barely held his mobile; fingers almost loose enough to let it fall.

Which is what he wanted. What he intended. But when it rang, he clutched it tight enough to hurt.

*********

“Busy this evening?”

The voice was warm, smooth; every single nerve in his body tightened just hearing it. Lestrade swallowed and forced his own to cooperate. “Could be persuaded to take a moment from combing through cold cases,” he said, a slight roughness giving lie to the easy manner he meant to project. Damn, and damned. He closed his eyes.

“I have a reputation for persuasiveness.”

“Among other things,” he said, before he could fight it back, but he was saved by the lilt in his voice, the teasing that, once started, he couldn’t quite control. He was grateful for it just now, as grateful as he was humiliated.

“Don’t believe everything you hear.”

“Never. Got to have evidence.” He finally managed easiness, real easiness, and felt only a bit of nausea hearing that low chuckle. It grew, though, when he realized the other reason his stomach seemed to be curling.

“I’ll send the car around eight.”

“I’ll meet you,” Lestrade countered swiftly, panic rising at just the thought of one of those sleek black cars gliding up the street.

“Then I’ll email directions.” Distracted suddenly, and Lestrade’s shoulders slumped in relief. “See you then.”

“Right.” And he could move, could break the connection and feel a moment’s freedom. Four hours’ freedom. But his eyes were drawn again to the fan, the graceful and economical chop of the blades, smooth as the ticking of a clock.

*********

The groan that tore itself free of his lungs, of his throat, at the lightest touch of those hands... Lestrade would have called it embarrassing, had it been anyone else. But then those lips ghosted over his and he chased them desperately, opening his mouth freely and groaning again, and it wasn’t embarrassment that made him keep his eyes so firmly closed.

It was shame. Red-hot, sickly, and in no way an antidote to the electric shock of lust animating his limbs.

Teeth sank gently into his lower lip and Lestrade whimpered, his hips bucking forward and finding such lovely friction, an answering gasp and hips moving back against his, setting a rhythm to which he acquiesced eagerly, gratefully. He let his head thump back against the wall, clutching tighter when the mouth on his neck gentled, teeth hidden.

“Please, please--”

“Bed.” Hot breath against his ear and a gentle bite, no more than a nibble, on his earlobe. Lestrade shook his head wildly.

“No, please, here--” he gasped, then cried out, when those hands held him, found the zipper to his trousers and pulled, still so strong and in control. It was good, so good; he couldn’t think, couldn’t remember anything but pleasure and not to open his eyes, god, so good--

Until he was shaking with it, overwhelmed and lost, coming so hard he thought his heart might give out. Hands smoothed over face, pushing back through his hair, and the taste of lust and shame seemed to coat his tongue: coppery and thick, like blood. Reluctantly, Lestrade opened his eyes.

Mycroft’s gaze was gentle, affection blending into desire so completely that Lestrade couldn’t be sure they were two emotions and not one. But what would that be? He almost couldn’t move his arms, lethargy hitting hard, but he couldn’t--

“The bedroom,” Mycroft started to say, and Lestrade caught his mouth in a messy kiss.

“Here,” he said again, panted it really. Mycroft’s expression deepened, it seemed, into something even less comprehensible, as he let Lestrade push him against the wall and kiss him again. He gasped something; Lestrade wasn’t listening. He was sinking to his knees, fighting with Mycroft’s zipper and eager to let anything overshadow that terrible taste in his mouth.

Feeling Mycroft’s body tremble, his hands shake as they combed through his hair, made Lestrade weak. He sucked hard, ignoring the tears prickling at the corners of his eyes. Triumph, heady and sweet, filled him when Mycroft gasped aloud.

“Some day, we will make it to the bedroom,” Mycroft said after a moment, tugging gently but insistently at Lestrade’s shoulder. Lestrade stood, but kept his eyes down as he busied himself with fixing the state of their clothing. Mycroft made an amused noise, not quite a laugh. “A bit unnecessary, don’t you think?”

“Don’t know how you’re still talking,” he muttered, and shivered only a little when Mycroft lifted his chin to kiss him.

“You make me giddy,” Mycroft whispered.

“Stop talking,” Lestrade begged, trying not to shake.

*********

“Rough night, Lestrade?”

Sherlock’s mocking drawl cut across his nerves like razor wire. Lestrade whipped his head up and snapped, “I’m not the victim. Focus, or get out.”

“Or just get out,” Anderson put in, and at least Sherlock’s attention was diverted again. Lestrade tried to control his breathing, to let his heart-rate sink to something resembling normal.

He ignored Dr. Watson’s concerned stare. It wasn’t anyone’s business; he was managing this fine. No one would have noticed if it weren’t for bloody Sherlock Holmes. He tried not to twitch, or to just adjust his coat, or to give any sort of hint at all, because if Sherlock knew it was his brother, god. If he knew--

“My advice is to end it,” Sherlock said suddenly, and Lestrade jumped.

“What?”

“End it,” Sherlock said again, distaste dripping from each word. “The sex can’t be worth the complications.”

Now everyone was staring, and if Lestrade had felt he was having a heart attack before, now he must be having several all at once. “If I want your advice, I’ll ask for it. Which I did. About the victim.”

Sherlock held his gaze for a moment, daring him to look away. Lestrade cursed himself to hell and back when he did.

*********

Mycroft’s hands were strong and steady with the knife, chopping the onions evenly and small. Lestrade watched them, feeling like needles were pressing under his skin.

“And how is my brother?” Mycroft asked lightly, as if it was of no consequence; as if it wasn’t strange at all that he should know the details of Lestrade’s day. But it wasn’t, was it? A privilege that came with the black cars, the access to any Yard file he chose... and those not the greatest. Lestrade clutched his beer a bit more tightly.

“Seems fine.” Seeing Mycroft’s raised eyebrow, he continued reluctantly. “He asked about my night.”

Mycroft sighed. “I hoped he would grow out of it. A teacher once called him a liar; he amassed a small mountain of evidence proving her to be an adulterer and, therefore, the one who was a liar.” He laid the knife down. “Always the most prurient angle, even then. He was eight.”

“Precocious,” Lestrade managed.

“In some things.” A smirk curled his lips as Mycroft dumped the onions into a small pan. “He couldn’t tie his shoes until he was ten.”

Lestrade spat out his beer.

*********

The dark shifted behind his eyes until he had to open them, stare blindly at the ceiling. Mycroft’s breath gusted lightly on his shoulder.

It was the third time he’d spent the night that week.

Panic curled up and down his spine, fighting the warm lassitude that pooled lazily from wherever Mycroft’s still-heated skin touched his own. He felt hypersensitive; the sheets scratched and caught at the hair on his legs, the arm resting on his chest was heavy as an iron bar. And every breath strained against it, his nipples rubbing just so against that soft, sweet skin until he was hard, wide-awake and desperate.

He could taste bile in the back of his throat, and blood.

Moving slowly, curbing his instinct to bolt, Lestrade slid out from under the sheets and Mycroft’s arm. He stumbled to the bathroom and shut the door before turning on the light. A single look at his panicked face was enough to bring him to his knees, retching as quietly as he could, dry-heaving and losing even the memory of the lust to which he’d woken.

And then there was Mycroft, arms settling ‘round him and his anxious but still smooth voice in Lestrade’s ear. “Are you ill? Should I--”

“No--” Lestrade choked, then buried his face in Mycroft’s shoulder, damning himself and shaking harder, though paradoxically his stomach stopped roiling. “Just--just a nightmare. I think.”

“You think,” Mycroft repeated, and pressed his mouth to Lestrade’s hair.

“I can’t remember,” he lied, and felt Mycroft sigh.

“No, of course not.”

*********

It was just after eleven o’clock, five o’clock’s hurriedly grabbed dinner now a wistful ghost in his stomach, when his mobile rang.

“Lestrade,” he said, mind so completely focused on the victim’s brother’s alibi that he didn’t register who’d called until Mycroft spoke.

“You’re working late.”

Mycroft’s voice was even, emotionless. Lestrade’s mouth opened, but no sound came out, and he dropped the pen he’d been chewing on--bad habit, but better than smoking.

“It’s gone eleven.”

His face was burning. Words lined up in his mind, in his throat--this is my job, these are the hours--he’d always known there was a whip, but Mycroft had never gone so far as to crack it. Rage and shame boiled low in his gut.

“Please come home.”

And if I don’t?

No. He didn’t dare ask.

“Twenty minutes,” he said instead, and hung up before he could scream. It would take him ten minutes to get back to his flat.

He spent the first ten with his head in his hands, trying to breathe.

*********

“You barely slept at all last night, you barely ate--”

“It’s my job!” Lestrade shouted, his chest heaving. He slammed his hands down on the kitchen counter, trying not to shake. “It’s not bloody nine to five, I don’t work to a clock--”

“You’ll drive yourself into an early grave,” snapped Mycroft, whose hands were clenched on the back of the kitchen chair. There were blotches of colour high in his cheeks. Lestrade felt a dull, angry pleasure at the sight of them.

“Wouldn’t want that; might put a damper in your plans for me,” he sneered, so high on anger and adrenaline that he almost didn’t register how his stomach plunged as the words escaped.

Mycroft’s colour worsened. “Plans? Are you listening to yourself?”

“What would you call it, then? An agenda?” Hysterical laughter was bubbling up in his throat. Funny, how it too tasted like bile. “It’s off, whatever it is; I don’t fucking care. It’s off.”

“What--”

“End my career, have me disappeared; I don’t fucking care!” Lestrade shouted the last, finally, finally, after weeks, after months, lifting his eyes and staring Mycroft Holmes down. “I don’t fucking care.”

“You--I--” Mycroft’s eyes were wide with something dark and bleak.

“I don’t know what it is you do, but I don’t have to know it to know what you can do.” Lestrade gestured wildly. “British government, head of the western world, whatever it is, I jdon’t fucking care. I don’t.” He was running out of words. These were ones he’d swallowed down, held back, kept hidden for ages, and now that they were free and gone he had nothing left. He felt empty. He felt free.

Mycroft backed away from him, hit the refrigerator, and sat down abruptly on the floor.

Lestrade gaped.

“You thought I--” Mycroft was breathing hard, his hands shaking uselessly on the floor. “I didn’t--I don’t--” He brought one hand to his mouth and Lestrade realised Mycroft was heaving, swallowing against an urge to vomit. He couldn’t move.

When he looked up again, years later, his eyes were wide and bleak as a desert of ice. “I--I love you,” he said simply, stunned and broken, the words like shards.

Lestrade could only stare back.

After another few years of silence, Mycroft stood and walked out of the flat.

*********

Ghostly little tendrils of smoke licked lazily at the ceiling and Lestrade shied away from the kitchen, and from whatever experiment Sherlock had going. The smoke comforted him, though. He patted the patch on his arm without thinking.

Probably Dr. Watson didn’t realize Sherlock had left something burning when they left. Lestrade hoped so. The doctor seemed more reliable than that. He peered back in the kitchen and wondered if he ought to figure out what it was, and put the flame out, if he ended up having to leave before they came back.

If only Sherlock would answer his damned texts.

Footsteps and then the door opened, and Lestrade turned.

“Lestrade!” Dr. Watson said cheerfully. He was limping a bit today, Lestrade noticed, stepping forward to shake his hand. “Sorry, Sherlock’s still... somewhere.”

“Not answering your texts either?” Lestrade asked, and the doctor shrugged.

“When he’s onto something, he’s onto it,” he said. “Tea?”

“No, thanks,” Lestrade said. “Did you know something’s burning over there?”

Dr. Watson’s eyes closed and he seemed to be counting to ten, so Lestrade said hurriedly, “Look, could you just ask him to text when he’s, uh, back? It could be important.”

“Yes, I can.” The doctor scratched at his eyebrow. “Um, glad to see you’re, uh, doing better.”

Lestrade’s own eyebrow jumped up. “Sorry?”

“It’s just--” Dr. Watson shrugged again. “You were jumpy for a while, there. Don’t know what was going on, but you seemed, well. Off.”

“Yeah, I guess,” Lestrade said blankly. Maybe so, but the doctor was the first to mention it.

“The complications weren’t worth it, then?”

All right; second. Lestrade felt his chest tighten a bit, and strove to keep his mind empty and clear. “No.”

It got a bit awkward then, or a bit more awkward, and Lestrade escaped before too long. He tucked his coat a bit closer ‘round himself, moving lightly down the steps. It hadn’t been worth it. Not what they’d had.

He stepped out onto the street just as the door of the sleek black car opened, and Mycroft was half-way out before he saw Lestrade, frozen in place. For the longest moment--even longer than any that had taken place that night, that last night--they stood frozen, staring at each other, hunger, loneliness, and fear matched in their eyes.

What they could have had, well.

Jury was still out on that.

*********

**Author's Note:**

> From this prompt: http://sherlockbbc-fic.livejournal.com/8651.html?thread=38571211#t38571211
> 
> Because it was amazing and my mind was fired up for angst. Oh, yes, and nothing is beta-ed or Brit-picked because I am a terrible person. And there is no happy ending because terrible person again.


End file.
